Texturing and Modeling, Third Edition: A Procedural Approach (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Graphics) [Hardcover]

David S. Ebert (Author), F. Kenton Musgrave (Author), Darwyn Peachey (Author), Ken Perlin (Author), Steve Worley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 16, 2002 | ISBN-10: 1558608486 | ISBN-13: 978-1558608481 | Edition: 3

The third edition of this classic tutorial and reference on procedural texturing and modeling is thoroughly updated to meet the needs of today's 3D graphics professionals and students. New for this edition are chapters devoted to real-time issues, cellular texturing, geometric instancing, hardware acceleration, futuristic environments, and virtual universes. In addition, the familiar authoritative chapters on which readers have come to rely contain all-new material covering L-systems, particle systems, scene graphs, spot geometry, bump mapping, cloud modeling, and noise improvements. There are many new spectacular color images to enjoy, especially in this edition's full-color format.

As in the previous editions, the authors, who are the creators of the methods they discuss, provide extensive, practical explanations of widely accepted techniques as well as insights into designing new ones. New to the third edition are chapters by two well-known contributors: Bill Mark of NVIDIA and John Hart of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on state-of-the-art topics not covered in former editions.

An accompanying Web site (www.texturingandmodeling.com) contains all of the book's sample code in C code segments (all updated to the ANSI C Standard) or in RenderMan shading language, plus files of many magnificent full-color illustrations.

No other book on the market contains the breadth of theoretical and practical information necessary for applying procedural methods. More than ever, Texturing & Modeling remains the chosen resource for professionals and advanced students in computer graphics and animation.

*New chapters on: procedural real-time shading by Bill Mark, procedural geometric instancing and real-time solid texturing by John Hart, hardware acceleration strategies by David Ebert, cellular texturing by Steven Worley, and procedural planets and virtual universes by Ken Musgrave.
*New material on Perlin Noise by Ken Perlin.
*Printed in full color throughout.
*Companion Web site contains revised sample code and dozens of images.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This book has always been my favorite computer graphics book...The authors are the key inventors of the technology and some of the most creative individuals I know."-From the foreword by Pat Hanrahan, Canon USA Professor, Stanford University

"This new edition updates the definitive book on the subject with 50% more material. Video game developers will be particularly interested in the demenstrations of procedural texturing and modeling on real-time hardware..."-Steve Anderson, CTO, Electronic Arts, Los Angeles

"Texturing and Modeling, Third Edition has kept up with the latest technology and provides insight and instruction on how to best use it. I would recommend it to anyone as an introduction to procedural techniquest or as a comprehensive reference."-Doug Roble, Creative Director of Software, Digital Domain

From the Back Cover

"This book has always been my favorite computer graphics book...The authors are the key inventors of the technology and some of the most creative individuals I know."
-From the foreword by Pat Hanrahan, Canon USA Professor, Stanford University

"This new edition updates the definitive book on the subject with 50% more material. Video game developers will be particularly interested in the demonstrations of procedural texturing and modeling on real-time hardware..."
-Steve Anderson, CTO, Electronic Arts, Los Angeles

"Texturing & Modeling, Third Edition has kept up with the latest technology and provides insight and instruction on how to best use it. I would recommend it to anyone as an introduction to procedural techniques or as a comprehensive reference."
-Doug Roble, Creative Director of Software, Digital Domain

Procedural methods are storage-saving modeling and texturing techniques that provide amazing results. This third edition of the most respected tutorial and reference on procedural methods is fully revised and expanded by today's 3D graphics practitioners.

Especially noteworthy in this edition are bonus chapters by Bill Mark, author of Cg, and by John Hart of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, providing insights of particular interest to game developers as well as all users of real-time graphics.

As in both previous editions of Texturing & Modeling, Third Edition, the award-winning creators of these procedural methods show, step by step, how to produce the breathtaking effects illustrated in this beautiful, full-color book.

Features:

*Real-time issues for game developers

*Seven brand-new chapters, including real-time rendering, cellular texturing, and hardware acceleration

*All new information on particle systems, spot geometry, bump mapping, cloud modeling, and noise

*Full-color illustrations throughout

*Companion website (www.texturingandmodeling.com) containing C code procedures and RenderMan shading language for executing procedures

David S. Ebert is associate professor at Purdue University and editor in chief for IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics. F. Kenton Musgrave, CEO and CTO of Pandromeda, Inc., has developed digital effects for Titanic and Apollo 13. Darwyn Peachey is vice president of Pixar Animation Studios and developer of RenderMan. Ken Perlin is a professor of computer science and director of the Center for Advanced Technology and the Media Research Lab at New York University, and developer of Perlin Noise. Steven Worley publishes plug-in tools for 3D packages through his company, Worley Laboratories.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 712 pages
• Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann; 3 edition (December 16, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1558608486
• ISBN-13: 978-1558608481
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 1.8 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #138,300 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Extremely useful and interesting, but not technical enough April 17, 2004

By David Elder

Format:Hardcover

This is an update of a classic book on procedural texturing and modeling by the main founders of the field. The book presents lengthy discussions of classical procedural texturing using various noise functions of the sort originated by Ken Perlin (one of the authors). It discusses newer texturing techniques such as cellular texturing, which can be used, for example, to create convincing stone patterns. Other chapters focus on animating solid textures (e.g. marble forming, volumetric gasses, etc.), fractal terrain generation, and tips for utilizing existing graphics APIs and hardware for realtime procedural texturing. This is only a sampling of the topics covered.

Code samples in C and RenderMan are given throughout, although most algorithms are given in only one of those languages. This can be a bit of a problem, as many readers will probably not have access to a RenderMan implementation. Nevertheless, it is not too difficult to translate the RenderMan code into C code in many instances.

The biggest drawback to this book is its lack of rigorous technical coverage. The decision to omit many mathematical details was a conscious choice on the part of the authors. Instead the book is mostly prose discussion of the techniques and the coarse descriptions of the underlying concepts. Although the prose is mostly clear, many times I felt myself in need of more specific, technical details. Fortunately, the book's authors are the primary researchers in this field and most of the ideas in the book have been published in academic journals. It was very easy to supplement the book with these primary sources.

Overall I found this to be a very interesting and useful book, with many algorithms essentially ready-to-run right out of the book. It would get five stars, except for the lack of technical and mathematical details mentioned above. Every serious worker in graphics needs to have this book on their shelf. I use mine often.

43 of 54 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars This could easily have been a lot better December 6, 2001

By Black Belt Systems

Format:Hardcover

This book has several serious problems.

The most glaring is that a significant number of the examples are coded in the "Renderman shading language". This language serves, in this book, to hide detail, detail specifically related to producing textures. Of course, if you know the language, you're fine - but most won't know the language and so this is a grievous error.

By way of welcome contrast, other examples in this same book are instead presented as C code fragments or functions. That's just the ticket - using a broadly known, freely available, relatively low-level language with no recourse to unknown hidden graphics functionality is precisely the way to go when explaining ideas in the domain of those this book is intended to convey.

The second problem is one of content. While being concise to the level of a math text is not desirable, this book contains a very sparse field of useful information considering the number of pages. The margins are too wide, the text too large, the form factor of the book too small, and the authors too wordy to possibly convey a good basis for texturing in general - it is a broad and fascinating field, touched only in the briefest and most unsatisfying manner by this book.

I do take issue with the reviewer who complained about the exposition on how to make a brick texture; that area of the text, while it may be already quite familiar to many who are interested in texturing, contains precisely the level of detail that needs to pervade a book of this type, and detail about steps that underly critical basic texturing ideas. Without understanding those basic texturing tools, a novice misses the first step on the stairs and fall on their face. The problem is, this approach is not consistent for more complex ideas in this volume, few as those actually are.

The book is entitled "Texturing and Modeling". While there is a moderate amount of texturing information in it, whatever you do, don't get it if modeling is your goal. It is very nearly devoid of modeling information, and what there is (smoke, a planet simulation, a few other items) is very basic indeed.

Finally, as a general critique, the authors (all of them) need to learn the basic idea that when presenting a function in any language to a new audience, one should precisely define the domain (and rationale) of the inputs and outputs of the function. As an example, one might encode the function for Perlin noise, and have no idea whatsoever as to what values to feed it to get particular types of results. For those of us who can read and understand what the function is actually doing (which is esoteric, make no mistake about it) the answers will eventually be illuminated by careful study of the function. However, this is very advanced material, and I am absolutely certain that many readers will be unable to figure out how to effectively use this function without a great deal of trial and error. You can also read that as "wasting a great deal of their time." That is because they won't be learning anything that could not have been conveyed by the author(s) in a single short paragraph of domain information.

In summary:

The 2 stars is because I didn't think this was a very good book. On the other hand, it is one of the very few books that deals with the subject at all, and for that reason, you should definitely own it if textures are an interest of yours.

If you're newly interested in textures, this will give you a basis for further exploration. It won't give you a cookbook by any means.

If you're looking for cookbook and "how to" approaches, get on the web and the newsgroups.

Finally, if you're considering writing a good book about creating textures, by all means, please do. The world needs a good one: this most definitely isn't it. I'd be delighted to be one of the first owners of your new book.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent guide for the Non-mathematic minded... February 8, 1998

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

Yippeee!!!
Finally, a book that explains Fractal noise, Bump mapping, textures and Terrain modelling in a simple way that doesn't boggle your mind

I've always wondered how to make my own Smoke effects, how 3D Fractal Terrain is created, how to make Clouds and a whole lot more...
This Book is really cool! It does feel a little *academic*, but its a fascinating read and even a dummy like myself can follow the text! (Hey, I hate Maths!)

Excellent!